Cristo -The Mastaba on the Serpentine

The light plays tricks on your eyes as the red barrels making up the sides of Cristo's first ever installation in the UK seem to be a different colour to their ends. It's not the case. This summer we learn what a mastaba is - a bench, originating in Mesapotamia. The temporary floating scuplture looks more like a decapitated pyramid or iceberg. Take your pick. With it's carefully planned minimal environmental impact is a giant something; part comment on global warming perhaps, part challenging building blocks - grown up lego, part, well, fun.

The best view is across the reeds near the Diana fountain. It grew on me as I walked around the lake, yet I found the pedallos and rowing boats, the typical things floating there, a distraction. I'd rather have seen it alone and colourfully menacing in the water, but that's what happens when you try to introduce art on this scale in the centre of the city. Worth a trot passed, but don't make a special trip.

Ron Mueck at the Cartier Foundation

Hyper-realist sculpture lovingly crafted? Stunning building with woodland spring plants in full bloom? Must be an afternoon outing on May Day. I spent my day off (thanks international workers everywhere) dodging the showers in this stunning exhibition.

There are few pieces on show, but that's the point. You are not meant to be overwhelmed by the work of Aussie born Londoner, Ron Mueck. You're meant to take your time and really look at them.

My companion and I spent a good long while engaging with the narratives that each piece provokes.  Perhaps that's because we are both writers. Perhaps not. Some are tender and amusing, some shocking, some unnerving. All are beautifully observed.

Go see for yourself,. It's on until the end of September, but be prepared to queue, although to be honest we chatted the hour away quite happily.

Reading University Fine Art Degree Show 2011

The annual Undergraduate and Masters degree show is on until 24 June, every day 10am to 4pm at Earley Gate. The usual mix of excellence, invention, pastiche and the pedestrian, which proves one thing - art like poetry is very much a matter of taste: what I like, you might hate and visa versa. This is the work that engaged me most this year as sculpture (apologies to the artist, I forgot to write down the name - but query Kara Dennis).

Ai WeiWei - Zodiac Heads

Ai's huge bronze heads of animals from the Chinese zodiac form a semi-circle in the courtyard of Somerset House this summer. They are intriguing and somewhat scary. I am year of the tiger (which looks rather ursine) 

but my favourite was the dragon.

Worth swinging by and taking a look at your birth year animal if you are in the vicinity at any point in the next couple of months. We know where the heads are, but where's their creator?